Well, to be fair, we did tell them to put down their phones and go outside to play. A cinematic snowball fight shot on iPhone 11 Pro by David Leitch, who has directed: John Wick, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw.
Well, to be fair, we did tell them to put down their phones and go outside to play. A cinematic snowball fight shot on iPhone 11 Pro by David Leitch, who has directed: John Wick, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw.
Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
My Back Pages
In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Your Say
My Thinking Hat
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
The Vault
My Back Pages
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Comments on this entry are closed.
History is divided into two era. Before iPhone, and after iPhone.
Think that’s an overstatement? Look at movies before the iPhone, and think of how many dire situations could’ve been solved or escaped from if the character had just whipped out the smart phone.
Before the iPhone, I never took photos. I did not know which end of the camera the round came out of. Now, I do take some snaps. It feels a bit like ascending from the primordial ooze.
But, I shan’t be making any epic movies like this one posted. I’ll leave that for the real movie makers.
In the continuing effort to kill joy & happiness everywhere…. the city of Wausau, Wisconsin has outlawed throwing snowballs.
https://wausaupilotandreview.com/2019/12/05/yes-throwing-snowballs-is-illegal-in-wausau-but-its-not-a-new-rule/
Looks like a junior version of Gladiator
Awww,how unexpected. The girlzz win. Again.
Much as I don’t support anything “i……” this was good!
What you’re looking at there is not necessarily the results of better equipment but rather the difference between a novice and an expert filmist. Yeah, I just invented that word. We’ve all see what novice picture/video takers can do and the quality of the tool has little to do with it. I’ll posit that an educated and experienced filmist can make even a rudimentary tool perform nicely. Clearly, the example above was done by people with vast experience.
Yeah, Ghost, but remember that Chinese gal who does the rural cooking videos? She would shoot and *edit* hers on an iPhone 6. Now she has better equipment and help, but she did amazing stuff with basic equipment and no training.
But yeah, that was made by successful movie director. Those guys can see the finished product in their head before one frame is exposed. It’s the same with music producers. They hear a few chords knocked out on a guitar and they can hear an arranged, finished piece. I have no idea how they do it.
There have been times in the last few years when I regretted I did not have a camera or a video camera handy. Then I remembered, sometimes anyway, that I actually do have one in my back pocket, and it takes amazingly good photos and videos.
Gordon, that happens to me too all the time, forgetting I have a camera in my pocket. My point above was two fold, that much of the cell camera picture and video taking that is done now a days is on the fly by people that can’t be bothered with the arduous task of thinking for 3 seconds before snapping the pik. I’m not immune to this malady. We’ve all done it. I’m not saying that every pik or vid should be planned out to the nth degree but having an idea about what the end result should be would do wonders.
Regarding the above video. What you are looking at is planning, filming, editing, and I’ll suggest the editing is the most important part as that is the part that everyone sees. No one sees the mistakes that have been cut out. I’d bet money the unedited version is less enjoyable than the edited version. Back in the Windows 98 era I had a pretty good video camera and purchased some regarded video editing software but alas I quickly found I wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing.
I remember (cough, cough) when a guy had to balance a video camera on his shoulder and wear a 30 pound belt of batteries….
It’s kinda funny who does turn out to have an interest in that sort of editing. Like you, I once had the software, and never ever used it. But I have seen a gal who seemingly had no interest at all take a knock-off version of Photoshop and turn out some stunning stuff.